Language is perhaps the most important function of the human body. It is furthermore a system steeped in history and society , thus susceptible to major changes over several years or more. Today we want reveal 6 interesting facts about the function of language and languages.
1-There are between 6000 and 7000 languages in the world, spoken by 7 billion people. There are about 225 indigenous languages only in Europe. Many languages h
ave 50,000 words or more, but few people know them all . In fact , for conversations of everyday life are a few hundreds of words.
2- Most European languages belong to three large groups :
- Germanic (Danish, Norwegian , Swedish , Icelandic , German , Dutch, English and Yiddish)
- Romance (Italian , French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian)
- Slave (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian)
3- The most widely spoken language on the planet is based in the most populated country on the planet: It is Mandarin! This language is spoken by 1 billion people! Speaking Mandarin can be really tough, because each word can be pronounced
in four ways (or “tones”), and a beginner will invariably have trouble distinguishing one tone from another. The second most spoken language in the world is English. It is the official language of more countries than any other language.
4- In its first year, a baby utters a wide range of vocal sounds; at around one year, the first understandable words are uttered; at around three years, complex sentences are formed; at five years, a child possesses several thousand words. The mother tongue is usually the language one knows best and uses most. But there can be ‘perfect bilinguals’ who speak two languages equally well. Bilingualism brings with it many benefits: it makes the learning of additional languages easier, enhances the thinking process and fosters contacts with other people and their cultures
5- The French surgeon Pierre Paul Broca demonstrated that the hemisphere of the brain responsible for the function of the interface language is left . further research and thorough studies , stating that this is true for almost all right-handed subjects, but not at all for those left-handed: in this case, language function is lateralized to the right in fifty percent of cases; to the left , in the twenty-five; finally, in both hemispheres for the rest.
6- There is an artificial language and it is called Esperanto. Esperanto is an international language, created to facilitate communication amongst people from different countries. Esperanto was created in 1887 by Dr. LL Zamenhof to be a second language that would allow people who speak different native languages to communicate , yet at the same time to retain their Own languages and cultural identities . In practical use for more than a hundred years, Esperanto has proved to be a genuinely living language, capable of expressing all facets of human thought.
To Know more:
http://listverse.com/2008/06/26/top-10-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world/
http://esperanto.org/us/USEJ/world/index.html
http://edl.ecml.at/LanguageFun/LanguageFacts/tabid/1859/language/it-IT/Default.aspx
http://www.sulromanzo.it/blog/otto-curiosita-linguistiche-tra-colori-e-animali-parlanti
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